woops
is not like other people
perhaps because the alternative would be to sit there each coldly appreciating the exquisite erotic vibe and that would be even more embarrassing
Films You've Seen Recently and Don't Know WTF to think
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Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
No I feel you, I'm just inclined to push through the awkwardness internally, trying to confront the locus of taboo or whatever we can call the heart of it.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
More or less my approach.
william kent
Well-known member
I started watching Trainspotting with a mate and his parents when I was fourteen or fifteen and he got up pretty early on and just disappeared off somewhere, so I ended up sat watching the majority of it with just his parents, the sex scene included.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Watched the new(ish) Ben Wheatley one, In the Earth and... it's a sort of Blair Witch thing where they wander off into woods maybe haunted by a kinda pagan spirit, and then it goes a bit torture porn, and then there is the trademark psychedelic sequences (fair enough, not as long as I'd feared) and... what? It was disjointed and I struggled to see the point, despite Joel Fry being very good as the out of his depth punching bag that most of the bad stuff happens to, and the guy out of League of Gentlemen and No 9, in fact solid performances all round but as often with this guy I feel there is a point there but I'm nowhere near grasping it.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Saw Last Night in Soho last night in... well, in the cinema in El Corte Ingles which wouldn't have been my choice of venues if I had found somewhere else that showed it. But actually it looked and sounded good in there and the psychedelic sequences borrowed from Repulsion and George Clouzot's Inferno were suitably intense and as overwhelming as they had been designed to be.
But the film itself was confused and in turn it confused me. It seemed unable to work out whether certain people were victims or aggressors or aggressors cos they were victims, and also what that meant in terms of their moral standing.
Now I'm all for ambiguity in the hands of a skilled master who shows you the complexity of a situation to explain that there are no easy answers, but when it feels that the director is merely flailing around going "Well I guess they were the baddie, or maybe it wasn't so bad what they did, oh I don't know" it's simply not that involving, the film itself - in parts - feels almost like a test run so he can figure out how it should go...
And a lot of that I think arose cos of a sort of forced twist ending which I didn't really buy and which sent foreshadowing ripples out in front of it making the whole film feel a little bit out of sorts with itself.
But none of that is important really, you probably want to know if it's really like a giallo and, apart from a few shots, it's not. Instead of the expected grittily menacing euro funk soundtrack we get a load of 60s easy listening selections - the idea clearly being that context can somehow imbue these mundane and familiar bits of fluff with an extra, sinister element... but that doesn't really work, it's just left Down Town stuck in my head all day.
And the character of the protagonist's friend - the most non-threatening, sexless black man they could find in the whole of London - was badly misjudged.
As usual I'm listing all the bad points, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it. It was always moving, it looked good, it was great to see legendary venue The Toucan brought back to life like that...
I guess I could say a load more but this post is already verging on the way too long and tedious.
But the film itself was confused and in turn it confused me. It seemed unable to work out whether certain people were victims or aggressors or aggressors cos they were victims, and also what that meant in terms of their moral standing.
Now I'm all for ambiguity in the hands of a skilled master who shows you the complexity of a situation to explain that there are no easy answers, but when it feels that the director is merely flailing around going "Well I guess they were the baddie, or maybe it wasn't so bad what they did, oh I don't know" it's simply not that involving, the film itself - in parts - feels almost like a test run so he can figure out how it should go...
And a lot of that I think arose cos of a sort of forced twist ending which I didn't really buy and which sent foreshadowing ripples out in front of it making the whole film feel a little bit out of sorts with itself.
But none of that is important really, you probably want to know if it's really like a giallo and, apart from a few shots, it's not. Instead of the expected grittily menacing euro funk soundtrack we get a load of 60s easy listening selections - the idea clearly being that context can somehow imbue these mundane and familiar bits of fluff with an extra, sinister element... but that doesn't really work, it's just left Down Town stuck in my head all day.
And the character of the protagonist's friend - the most non-threatening, sexless black man they could find in the whole of London - was badly misjudged.
As usual I'm listing all the bad points, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it. It was always moving, it looked good, it was great to see legendary venue The Toucan brought back to life like that...
I guess I could say a load more but this post is already verging on the way too long and tedious.
entertainment
Well-known member
I think Titane would file nicely under this category. Something about the post-human freud thing seemed very fresh and it unfolded in interesting ways but the whole thing was so sprawling and disjunct it was hard to form a stable opinion about it.
Interesting thoughts about Last Night in Soho, Rich. There was a triailer for it in the cinema and I thought it looked good.
Interesting thoughts about Last Night in Soho, Rich. There was a triailer for it in the cinema and I thought it looked good.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Definitely don't let what I said put you off... I've been, not exactly harsh, but I have definitely dwelled on the bad points.
I went to see it with three friends, the same group whom I persuaded to come and see Dune in fact, none of them are really film geeks or even particularly aware of culture - what I mean by that in this context is that none of them had read Dune and none of them knew what a giallo film is. So in each case, while I wanted to see the films to gain new pieces to fit into a jigsaw I'd been working on for years, they were coming in completely cold with a kinda "That twat Rich wants to watch another one of his stupid films, I guess we can go along as nothing else is happening" attitude.
And coming in cold like that they all pretty much hated Dune, but, luckily, and to my surprise, they were far more positive about the Soho one. Much to my relief cos I really want to make this cinema club a recurring event, and while the guys see it a a social thing and are broadly happy as long as they can do loads of lines before, during and after the film, I understand that if I keep foisting on them stinkers that they struggle to sit through, then my nascent cinema club will be still-born.
I went to see it with three friends, the same group whom I persuaded to come and see Dune in fact, none of them are really film geeks or even particularly aware of culture - what I mean by that in this context is that none of them had read Dune and none of them knew what a giallo film is. So in each case, while I wanted to see the films to gain new pieces to fit into a jigsaw I'd been working on for years, they were coming in completely cold with a kinda "That twat Rich wants to watch another one of his stupid films, I guess we can go along as nothing else is happening" attitude.
And coming in cold like that they all pretty much hated Dune, but, luckily, and to my surprise, they were far more positive about the Soho one. Much to my relief cos I really want to make this cinema club a recurring event, and while the guys see it a a social thing and are broadly happy as long as they can do loads of lines before, during and after the film, I understand that if I keep foisting on them stinkers that they struggle to sit through, then my nascent cinema club will be still-born.
sufi
lala
yes, and add tetsuo ironman
woops
is not like other people
Today I was so bored I watched the fyre festival documentary which really hammered home what a bunch of wankers everyone involved is, organiser or punter, probably not news to anyone here but money and above all status is everything. They don't develop taste or relate to other people at all
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Is it actually entertaining or just depressing?
forclosure
Well-known member
i watched part of this and i feel like it would be better as group experience (partially cause i really REALLY don't like the leads performance in this)
en.wikipedia.org
story behind it is nuts and if this guy wasn't so filled up with gear and drugs people would be calling this "a singular auteurist vision"
The Evil Within (2017 film) - Wikipedia
story behind it is nuts and if this guy wasn't so filled up with gear and drugs people would be calling this "a singular auteurist vision"
woops
is not like other people
i'd watch thisi watched part of this and i feel like it would be better as group experience (partially cause i really REALLY don't like the leads performance in this)
The Evil Within (2017 film) - Wikipedia
story behind it is nuts and if this guy wasn't so filled up with gear and drugs people would be calling this "a singular auteurist vision"
forclosure
Well-known member
it's on youtube
IdleRich
IdleRich
Gonna put this review here though it could really go in any of the film threads. The film itself was a hodge podge of the good and bad so I guess ultimately it belongs in here in as much as I can't wholly recommend or slate it.
Molly's Game - another true crime drama type thing based on a woman called Molly Bloom who ran a load of super high stakes poker games for famous people, hedge fund managers and (what turned out to be) Russian gangsters. As a film it was ok I guess, it tells the "true" story of an Olympic level skier named after a character from Ulysses (at least they didn't call her Agamemnon I guess) who suffered a career ending injury and was seemingly going to have to settle for her back-up plan of a place at law school until her year out gave her an opportunity which caused her to change direction completely.
Basically she ended up as a personal assistant to a singularly unpleasant guy played by the son in Succession as almost exactly the same fragile spoiled brat millionaire - as well as being his slave on a daily basis she helped out at high stakes poker games that he organised and when he fired her she simply messaged everyone involved and told them that the next game was gonna be at a spot that she had hired. The list of numbers is effectively the game and so she was able to cut the originator out and carry on with her as the main man... until one of the players - a Hollywood star that she referred to as Mister X (played by Michael Cera) - did the same thing to her and left her high and dry. So she moved to NY and started again until she was busted once it turned out that a number of the players were gangsters and so, according to the story at least, the entirely innocent Bloom's money was unfairly seized by the FBI in a ruthless attempt to leverage her into becoming an informant and helping them nail the bad guys.
And this is where one of the main issues I have with the film comes in - it's all her words and her side of the argument. If we believe her then she was super smart and played with a straight bat all the way through, never even taking a percentage of the bets (until at the end when she kinda had to) and thus making her games entirely legal - her only income was the tips they gave her. Molly was scrupulously fair to everyone, she didn't employ any muscle to collect outstanding debts and it never crossed her mind that there might be anything slightly dodgy about a Russian guy who turned up carrying a Picasso as security and with two guys with machine guns to keep it safe. She never shagged any of her super glamorous clients who were all desperate to get in her knickers, none of her super-hot staff slept with any of the clients. Every time something went her way - eg she successfully stole the game and made hers more popular - it was morally justified and entirely down to people liking her and her fairness, but every time something went against her - eg Mr X stole the game off her and made his more popular - it was completely unfair and vindictive and basically she was being punished for being too honest and beautiful.
I'm very suspicious of that. I'm not even saying that she was particularly a bad guy, certainly no worse than any others, I just find it hard to believe that she could survive in this world of billionaires and criminals and so on simply by being fair and smart. Did she really not ever pay anyone to guard the hundreds of thousands of pounds that were brought to her suites while the games were on and so on?
The other issue, as with all biopics that I've seen, is that real lives don't really provide an actual narrative arc, they have an inconvenient way of just being some stuff that happens, with the occasional interesting bit along the way. That's exactly what happens here - after the glamour and excitement of hanging around with Toby X (er I mean Mister Maguire um whatever), FBI raids, the mafia breaking into her flat and sticking a gun in her mouth it kinda... just.... fizzles. Near the end there is an utterly excruciating scene with her father (Kevin Costner) that was so tedious I almost turned the film off. In fact both of us said that the scene was so bad that we weren't sure if we could get through it to watch the last two minutes and find out what happened in the end even though we'd invested two hours or so to get to this point.
Also, and this is somehow the main thing for me, American films of this kind about criminals who think they are smart (normally con men or card players or financial wizards of one sort or another) seem to always have this particular kind of voiceover delivered in a specific style that I find incredibly unpleasant. I think that the idea is that if you have someone talking really fast and with a lot of confidence about their chosen field and about winners and winning and their ice cold brains and will to win, you are supposed to admire their intelligence and also their will to win. But I hate it, I hate to hear people saying all this stuff like "If you're not the smartest guy then you're the mark" or "Losers keep on thinking they will get the money back next time and that's why they keep giving it to me" or "If you can't read exactly what everyone is thinking while doing ten digit probabilistic calculations in your head and lying with a smile you will end up in a bar telling anyone who will listen about how you could have made it - while I'm sitting on a pile of money in the bahamas as Kate Moss and Megan Fox compete to slobber the most coke off my dick".
And Molly's Game falls totally into the trap of having that cliche all over it and turned up to ten. There is an interesting-ish story in there and bits of it are well told. But it's not THAT interesting and by repeatedly insisting that it is the most important and glam thing that has ever happened it ultimately falls flat.
Molly's Game - another true crime drama type thing based on a woman called Molly Bloom who ran a load of super high stakes poker games for famous people, hedge fund managers and (what turned out to be) Russian gangsters. As a film it was ok I guess, it tells the "true" story of an Olympic level skier named after a character from Ulysses (at least they didn't call her Agamemnon I guess) who suffered a career ending injury and was seemingly going to have to settle for her back-up plan of a place at law school until her year out gave her an opportunity which caused her to change direction completely.
Basically she ended up as a personal assistant to a singularly unpleasant guy played by the son in Succession as almost exactly the same fragile spoiled brat millionaire - as well as being his slave on a daily basis she helped out at high stakes poker games that he organised and when he fired her she simply messaged everyone involved and told them that the next game was gonna be at a spot that she had hired. The list of numbers is effectively the game and so she was able to cut the originator out and carry on with her as the main man... until one of the players - a Hollywood star that she referred to as Mister X (played by Michael Cera) - did the same thing to her and left her high and dry. So she moved to NY and started again until she was busted once it turned out that a number of the players were gangsters and so, according to the story at least, the entirely innocent Bloom's money was unfairly seized by the FBI in a ruthless attempt to leverage her into becoming an informant and helping them nail the bad guys.
And this is where one of the main issues I have with the film comes in - it's all her words and her side of the argument. If we believe her then she was super smart and played with a straight bat all the way through, never even taking a percentage of the bets (until at the end when she kinda had to) and thus making her games entirely legal - her only income was the tips they gave her. Molly was scrupulously fair to everyone, she didn't employ any muscle to collect outstanding debts and it never crossed her mind that there might be anything slightly dodgy about a Russian guy who turned up carrying a Picasso as security and with two guys with machine guns to keep it safe. She never shagged any of her super glamorous clients who were all desperate to get in her knickers, none of her super-hot staff slept with any of the clients. Every time something went her way - eg she successfully stole the game and made hers more popular - it was morally justified and entirely down to people liking her and her fairness, but every time something went against her - eg Mr X stole the game off her and made his more popular - it was completely unfair and vindictive and basically she was being punished for being too honest and beautiful.
I'm very suspicious of that. I'm not even saying that she was particularly a bad guy, certainly no worse than any others, I just find it hard to believe that she could survive in this world of billionaires and criminals and so on simply by being fair and smart. Did she really not ever pay anyone to guard the hundreds of thousands of pounds that were brought to her suites while the games were on and so on?
The other issue, as with all biopics that I've seen, is that real lives don't really provide an actual narrative arc, they have an inconvenient way of just being some stuff that happens, with the occasional interesting bit along the way. That's exactly what happens here - after the glamour and excitement of hanging around with Toby X (er I mean Mister Maguire um whatever), FBI raids, the mafia breaking into her flat and sticking a gun in her mouth it kinda... just.... fizzles. Near the end there is an utterly excruciating scene with her father (Kevin Costner) that was so tedious I almost turned the film off. In fact both of us said that the scene was so bad that we weren't sure if we could get through it to watch the last two minutes and find out what happened in the end even though we'd invested two hours or so to get to this point.
Also, and this is somehow the main thing for me, American films of this kind about criminals who think they are smart (normally con men or card players or financial wizards of one sort or another) seem to always have this particular kind of voiceover delivered in a specific style that I find incredibly unpleasant. I think that the idea is that if you have someone talking really fast and with a lot of confidence about their chosen field and about winners and winning and their ice cold brains and will to win, you are supposed to admire their intelligence and also their will to win. But I hate it, I hate to hear people saying all this stuff like "If you're not the smartest guy then you're the mark" or "Losers keep on thinking they will get the money back next time and that's why they keep giving it to me" or "If you can't read exactly what everyone is thinking while doing ten digit probabilistic calculations in your head and lying with a smile you will end up in a bar telling anyone who will listen about how you could have made it - while I'm sitting on a pile of money in the bahamas as Kate Moss and Megan Fox compete to slobber the most coke off my dick".
And Molly's Game falls totally into the trap of having that cliche all over it and turned up to ten. There is an interesting-ish story in there and bits of it are well told. But it's not THAT interesting and by repeatedly insisting that it is the most important and glam thing that has ever happened it ultimately falls flat.
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